


chara is one fucked up buttercup

by roadkill_punk (orphan_account)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 10:58:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14519007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/roadkill_punk
Summary: the dreemurs adjust to having a damaged human child as part of the family





	chara is one fucked up buttercup

It was a beautiful day outside. Birds were singing, flowers were blooming, and Asgore was happily working in the royal garden. He was always happiest with his paws in the earth, surrounded by growing things. Kingly duties aside, he could spend all day spreading fertilizer or trimming away deadheads. Gardening was a welcome respite from carrying the weight of every miserable monster in the Underground. In his garden he wasn’t King Asgore, responsible for the future of all monsterkind; he was just a big old guy digging in the dirt and whistling Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Da.  
Absorbed by his work, he didn’t notice the human child sneaking up on him until they spoke from right behind him.  
“Are those for killing people?”  
He tried not to jump. The human’s habit of popping up suddenly and asking morbid questions was unsettling, but he tried hard to make them feel as safe and wanted as possible. A child was a child, whether furry, feathered, scaled, or covered in weird naked skin.  
“Those? Gosh, no. Those are garden shears! For pruning?”  
The human crept forward and inspected the shears. Asgore scratched his beard, watching them run their fingers along it’s dull blade. He was never sure what they were thinking. From the moment his son had brought them into the house like a stray dog, he’d vacillated between amusement and concern over the their bizarre behavior. It was endearing when they scarfed down sixteen chocolate chip cookies without taking a breath or moved all their bedding to make a nest in the closet; less so when they made a drawing of the whole family with creepily scribbled-out faces, or stole knives from the kitchen to hide under their pillow. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little bit frightened of what they might do, but they were his child now, and he was sure that with enough love and care they’d turn out just fine.  
“Do you want me to show you how to use them?” His voice evidently startled the human, and they flinched away like a beaten dog. Golly, they were skittish. They quickly composed themself, though, and answered in the affirmative.  
Before long, they were happily trimming away at his bushes, under his supervision. They didn’t seem to stick to any guidelines, instead choosing to randomly hack at whatever they could get their hands on, but as long as they were happy, Asgore was happy. Maybe this could be a good outlet for their aggressive impulses! He would much rather have them mangle his bushes than themself, or anyone else. They even seemed to be smiling, a rare sight indeed.  
That evening, they followed him around the house, peppering him with questions.  
“Can the shears cut through anything?”  
“Not anything, no.”  
“Could they cut through a tree?”  
“The branches, maybe. Not the trunk. But we don’t get many trees down here.”  
“Could they cut through a door?”  
“Probably not.”  
“Could they cut through a finger?”  
That one made him pause. “I sure hope not.”  
“What CAN they cut through?”  
“Oh, mostly just shrubs and woody plants. I use ‘em to shape my shrubs and keep the vines from overtaking the house. Could you toss me the towel?” He’d been washing the mud off his face, and his beard was dripping all over the bathroom floor. They complied without pausing their interrogation.  
“What else do you have?”  
“How do you mean?”  
“The shears. What else?”  
“... You mean what tools do I have?”  
The human rolled their eyes impatiently. “Yes.”  
“Oh, some trowels, some spades, a weeder or two. Rakes, hoes.”  
“My mom’s fuck buddy called her a ho when she locked him out of the apartment once.”  
“Oh. Golly.” Asgore blinks. “You shouldn’t say the eff word.”  
“Why not?”  
“It’s not nice.”  
“What’s a trowel?”  
Trying to follow this child’s train of thought made Asgore dizzy. He just tried to keep up. “It’s like a small shovel. I can show you, if you’d like.”  
“Now?”  
“In the morning. It’s almost time for dinner now, and I just washed up.”  
“What is she making for dinner?”  
“She? Her name is Toriel, you oughtta call her that. Or you could call her mom, like Azzy does.”  
“What is mom making for dinner?”  
Asgore smiled. “Snail casserole, with butterscotch-cinnamon pie for dessert.”

\------

Chara sat curled in Toriel’s armchair, listening to the clock tick and looking at their hands. They hated the nighttime, when the monsters all lay in their beds like corpses and they were left alone with themself and their thoughts and their clumsy naked hands. Sleep never came easy, and their mom had forbidden them from wandering through the Underground by themself, so they spent most nights stalking restlessly through the house like a cat. They hated the way everything looked in the silent darkness, especially their reflection in the hallway mirror. Without the light of day to illuminate their freak-eyes, they looked human through-and-through. The mere thought was enough to make their skin crawl.  
They flexed their fingers and tried to imagine what they would look like covered in soft white fur. What they would look like if they were gentle and kind like their mother, and had never once tried to strangle their brother to death or smash a window or set the curtains on fire. What they would look like without the ragged oozing skin where they’d chewed their fingers half to death, what they would look like without the bruising on their knuckles. What they would look like if they weren’t Chara.  
Across the room a floorboard creaked and they stiffened, instantaneously jolted into fight-or-flight survival mode. They recognized Azzy’s silhouette after a couple terrified seconds, but that didn’t stop their body from buzzing with adrenaline. He spoke quietly, but they couldn’t hear him over the sound of their heart pounding in their ears.  
“What?”  
“I asked if you had nightmares again.” Asriel hovered in the doorway. Clad in fuzzy pajamas and bunny-eared slippers, he looked more like a stuffed animal than a person. Chara sighed and forced their body to relax, and he padded over to sit on the floor beside them. They absent-mindedly stroked his silky head-fur.  
“No. I just do not sleep.” They’d slipped into their mother’s stiff, overly-formal dialect not long after joining the family. They didn’t trust themself not to fuck things up, so they modeled themself after someone who never dripped acid from her mouth.  
“I heard you crying again last night.” Asriel said softly. “I think you were dreaming. You kept saying mom over and over, but... it didn’t sound like you were talking about our mom.”  
Chara didn’t answer, but they didn’t retract their hand either. They just silently twirled a lock of his fur around their finger.  
“What were you were dreaming about?”  
Their hand went still. When they spoke, their voice was even, but a different pitch than usual. Higher, and carefully emotionless. “My mother was hitting me. My human mother.”  
“Why?” Asriel sounded like he genuinely couldn’t understand why a mother would ever hit her child. Chara couldn’t look him in the face. They didn’t want him to see how filthy and rotten they were. They didn’t want him to understand that they were just very hittable.  
“I stole candy out of her purse. She tied me to a chair and hit me with a belt. I did not steal from her any more after that.”  
“Chara…”  
“I was just so hungry. There wasn’t any food in the house. And I am a greedy little monster.” They said the word monster with relish, letting it melt in their mouth like a piece of chocolate. If they were a monster, it meant they weren’t human, and they did not ever want to be human.  
Asriel was silent.  
“She said that if I stole from her again, she would drown me in the bathtub like the cur that I am.”  
“Chara, I… I’m sorry.” The painful concern in his eyes made their chest tighten, so they didn’t look at him.  
“I did not care. I was dumb to steal from her purse. Like she wouldn’t notice. It is better to check the garbage cans in the alley.”  
“You had to eat garbage?” Asriel sounded like he was going to cry. They tried to comfort him.  
“There was good food in there. Humans throw away so much! Sometimes I found whole slices of pizza, still in the box. Sometimes I could feed the cats too, and no one was hungry.” They didn’t mention: sometimes I couldn’t find anything to eat and I cut my hands on the lids of empty cans and when the cats came to beg I stomped on their tails. Sometimes a neighbor saw me eating out of the trash and I swore at them, and they called the police and the police came to talk to my mom and she locked me in the closet with the litter box for two days. I didn’t care, though. I didn’t care at all.  
“You shouldn’t have had to do that. No one should.”  
Chara continued to not look at him. They weren’t going to cry. They were not a crybaby. They were tough. They were strong. They didn’t care about anything or anyone, including themself.  
“Chara? Do you want to sleep in my bed tonight…? I know it’s kind of small, but… if you have another nightmare, I could wake you up. I could hold your hand. And if you get hungry in the night I could get you a snack.”  
Well. Maybe that wasn’t quite true anymore. Maybe they cared about someone. A sincere and furry someone. A someone who kind of smelled like a barnyard, but who was gentler and kinder than anyone they’d ever known.  
“Yes. I would like that.”

\------

“CHAAAARAAAAAA!”  
Chara was rudely awoken by the unique sensation of a hundred-and-twenty-pound goatchild landing squarely on their stomach. They sputtered and wheezed as their brother rolled over to lay beside them on the bed, giggling madly.  
“You little shit!” It didn’t take them long to get their bearings. They pounced on Asriel and the two of them wrestled joyfully in the bed, kicking and biting without any real malice. He head-butted their shoulder, they smacked his furry face, he gently bit their hand, and they both thrashed around so vigorously they fell off the bed in a tangle of blankets and limbs.  
“Do I hear fighting in there?” Toriel’s singsong voice rang from the other room. “Children who hit their siblings do not get chocolate chip waffles for breakfast!” Her gentle threat was followed by heavy chortling, and the two kids made faces at each other as laughter turned into the unmistakable sound of their parents smooching.  
Chara grabbed Azzy’s ear and yanked, but instead of jumping back into the play-fight as they expected, he yelped and pulled away, tears springing into his eyes. They may have pulled a bit harder than intended. Chara felt a flush of guilt, but it was quickly diluted with anger. They were having fun and he ruined it! They didn’t mean to hurt him! It wasn’t their fault! Overwhelmed by the sudden and inexplicable burst of emotion, they lashed out.  
“Shut up, crybaby! I didn’t pull that hard!” They got up in his face, which only made the situation worse. At first he’d just been surprised, but now he was genuinely upset.  
“Chara, stop it!” Asriel cringed away and lifted his arms up to protect his face. Chara hit him so often that it was reflexive. They realized this and, furious with themself, they burst into hot angry tears, completely losing control and pummeling him with their fists.  
“Chara!” Toriel rushed into the room and swept the human child into her arms. They were in full-out breakdown mode now, and simply screamed into their adoptive mother’s chest. Toriel held them tightly, stifling cries of pain as her baby bit her and punched her and pulled her fur. She knew from experience that there was no talking Chara down at this point; all she could do was wait out the tantrum. She’d counseled hundreds of monsters throughout her years as queen and considered herself an excellent de-escalator, but nothing had prepared her for parenting this child. Try as she might, she couldn’t understand Chara’s violent and unpredictable mood swings, and she couldn’t do anything to prevent or control them. All she could do was love her child. She did so with great determination, but deep down she feared it could never be enough. Chara needed far more than she could give.  
Eventually, their screams gave way to sobs, which gave way to quiet sniffles. When Toriel was confident that Chara’s rage had passed-- as confident as one could be with a child like them, anyways-- she set them down on the floor and gave them her best smile.  
“Waffles?”  
Chara wiped her eyes and nodded slowly. “Waffles.”


End file.
